{"id":2457,"date":"2008-09-01T13:46:19","date_gmt":"2008-09-01T17:46:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.libology.com\/blog\/?p=2457"},"modified":"2008-09-01T13:55:45","modified_gmt":"2008-09-01T17:55:45","slug":"lakes-and-rivers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.libology.com\/blog\/2008\/09\/01\/lakes-and-rivers.html","title":{"rendered":"Lakes and Rivers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/orweblog.oclc.org\/archives\/001754.html\"><strong>Lorcan Demsey has a post on metadata<\/strong><\/a> that does a great job of illustrating two types of data collections by describing them as lakes and rivers.\u00a0 The idea did not originate with him; rather he encountered it via OCLC&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/hellman.net\/eric\/\">Eric Hellman<\/a>.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Lakes<\/strong> are repositories of information that change little over time, and are fed from a few well-defined sources, supplemented by occasional &#8220;springs&#8221;.\u00a0 A good analog for this is the library catalog.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Rivers<\/strong> are cascading flows of information, changing rapidly and fed by many sources.\u00a0 The quote that describes this most effectively is often attributed to Heraclitus : &#8220;you cannot step into the same river twice.&#8221;*<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This is a fantastic way to frame the ongoing transition that libraries face.\u00a0 We are transforming ourselves (being forced to transform?\u00a0 some combination of the two?) from a lake-based information service to a river-based information service.\u00a0 We are having to learn as we go to navigage ever-changing waterways, dodging sandbars and debris in a boat that was designed over a century ago for lake use.<\/p>\n<p>Keep this analogy in mind&#8230; it lends itself well.<\/p>\n<p>* Wikipedia offers the following quote listed within their page on <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Heraclitus\">Heraclitus<\/a>: &#8220;<em>We both step and do not step in the same rivers. We are and are not.<\/em>&#8221; This quote is simultaneously much more illustrative of the complexity of our situation, and much more confusing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lorcan Demsey has a post on metadata that does a great job of illustrating two types of data collections by describing them as lakes and rivers.\u00a0 The idea did not originate with him; rather he encountered it via OCLC&#8217;s Eric &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.libology.com\/blog\/2008\/09\/01\/lakes-and-rivers.html\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2922,2923,2927,2937,2943,2949],"tags":[3620,4006,4008,4009,4007,4010,4744],"class_list":["post-2457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cataloging","category-classification","category-definitions","category-history","category-libraries","category-oclc","tag-analog","tag-eric-hellman","tag-heraclitus","tag-lakes","tag-lorcan-demsey","tag-rivers","tag-rivers-lorcan-demsey"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pSU5g-DD","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.libology.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.libology.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.libology.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.libology.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.libology.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2457"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.libology.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2457\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.libology.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.libology.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.libology.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}